


the speed of frozen molasses

by chrundletheokay



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression, Eating Disorders, Emetophobia, Explicit Language, Gen, Past Drug Use, Suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 09:56:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16595660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrundletheokay/pseuds/chrundletheokay
Summary: The scheme has something to do with anarchists and a petting zoo, but Dennis is honestly too depressed to give a shit; Philly springs are the worst.





	the speed of frozen molasses

**Author's Note:**

> [TW: detailed descriptions of Dennis's eating disorder, past drug use, suicide mention, depression, alcoholism, emetophobia / vomiting]
> 
> (please let me know in the comments if additional trigger warnings would be helpful)

Dennis hasn’t eaten in days, and he feels like the mystery scum Charlie’s been proudly showing off on the bottom of his grungy, faded, old Vans hi-tops.

Spring has arrived in Philly, and it’s starting to warm up after an unnaturally cold winter. The biting wind turns to gentle breezes that tickle his skin, and the gray skies finally give way to a clear blue. It’s infuriating that the weather should be so pleasant, so coy, when Dennis feels like such shit. It’s practically a personal affront. Just as unbearable is feeling like such absolute garbage when he no longer has the concept of “winter blues” or “seasonal depression” to fall back on as an excuse.

Fuck Philly springs, honestly.

A few days into his seemingly uncontrollable moping, Dennis decides to take matters into his own hands. He’s not planning anything drastic, of course — not anything like suicide or smoking crack. After all, he’d once again learned his lesson on the latter when he and Dee had woken up in a squatters’s house in Kensington, coming down from a days-long crack binge. Mac was unbelievably pissed at the drug use and the way Dennis had completely dropped off the radar while using; he'd refused to speak to the twins for over a week afterward.

Mac’s silent treatment and fuming were even more intolerable than the depression in which Dennis currently finds himself mired. So no crack it is. And, obviously, no suicide. The world still needs Dennis Reynolds. His work on this planet — and indeed, in this universe — remains incomplete. Instead, he decides to go back to his good old standby: self-starvation, self-denial. It’s for the best. Maybe the high of starvation will jog him into a better mood.

—

He’s three days into it — or was it two? four? five? Who knows? He checks his food log, skimming over tallies of calories and measurements and weights. Six days? Maybe seven?

It doesn’t matter. Time is nothing more than a social construct when you’re this depressed. It’s a meaningless series of measurements that stretches intolerably before you and behind you, flowing with all the energy and speed of frozen molasses. It’s been forever, and it hasn’t been any time at all. Dennis doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care.

All that matters, and all that he knows, is that he doesn’t feel better. Lighter? Not really. His body feels as heavy as ever, even as he watches the number on the scale drop like so many flies before Charlie’s industrial-strength bug bombs.

He’s certainly hungrier. More content with his physical form? Eh. Whatever; it wasn’t even about that this time. But happier? Fuck no.

—

Dennis skips meals and lies in bed not sleeping. Most nights, he only manages to sleep in one or two hour increments. He wakes up frustrated and in pain, body aching, head throbbing, stomach gnawing away at his core.

At odd hours of the morning, when he’s given up on sleep, he stumbles out of bed and into the kitchen. He drinks mug after mug of black coffee, until he feels sick and shakes so much Mac stares worriedly. Then he curls into a ball on the sofa or crawls back into bed until it hurts too much to keep lying down.

For the first few weeks of his black mood, he feigns sickness to get out of going in to work. It’s not exactly a lie, because he feels sick in an acute but indescribable way. None of it is concrete, though. None of it feels real, except the hunger and the pain. And _oh god,_ the hunger.

After a week, the gang stops yelling at him and demanding he come in to the bar. Occasionally, he goes in for a few hours in the late afternoons or early evenings, and follows the latest scheme with detached disinterest. The latest one involves setting up a petting zoo for May Day, which — in addition to being some sort of old-timey pagan celebration — is apparently also an official communist holiday.

Dennis is not clear on the details, but he also doesn’t care. It doesn’t make any sense, celebrating a communist holiday with a petting zoo — or celebrating it at all, for that matter. But then, Mac and Charlie’s explanation doesn’t make sense, either. They relay it to Dennis one evening in the form of an unnecessarily long and convoluted story that he can barely follow. It seems one day, the two of them ran into a group of gay and transgender anarchists who were hanging out with a few pit bulls and a cat on a leash, talking shop and trading shitty Xeroxed pamphlets in a little park in South Philly. It sounds bizarre, but Dennis has seen stranger things.

They’ve definitely had worse ideas than this, but it's still pretty fucking stupid. Who’d want to pet filthy, sad animals standing around in a shit-filled play pen? And what the fuck does communism or anarchy have to do with it?

Sure enough, the petting zoo is a bust in the end, but not for the reasons Dennis had expected. It turns out that most of the anarchists were straight-edge vegans. They’d turned up at the bar, but only to drink kombucha out of Nalgene bottles and to protest the animal’s captivity with signs they’d hand-lettered on old bits of cardboard, like so many bums begging for spare change.

“But we had an alpaca and everything, dude,” Charlie exclaims.

Dennis just stares back blankly at the janitor, who, at some point after the protesters left, had inexplicably covered himself in ground beef and large cow stickers. There’s an anarchist circle-A drawn on one cheek and a crudely-drawn penis on the other. Dennis can only assume this was a misguided attempt to win the approval of the gay anarchist dudes. He shakes his head, and feels the stabbing pain growing behind his eyes.

He can’t bring himself to care about the scheme’s failure, or to be pissed at the gang like he knows he should be. All he wants to do is go home, curl up in bed and cry, and sleep for the rest of forever.

As Dennis makes his way out of the bar, Mac silently hands him a bottle of kombucha, a baguette, a head of kale, and a small Xeroxed pamphlet titled “did u just say CL(A)$$ W(A)R?!” (As a matter of fact, Dennis did not, and he never has.) The veganarchists had apparently left behind a ton of shit like this, possibly as some sort of calling card or attempt to educate the gang on the finer points of "the revolution."

He chucks Mac’s “gifts” into the dumpster behind the bar, drags himself home, vomits up stomach acid and shitty vodka, and throws himself into bed without even bothering to take off his shoes.

—

After the petting zoo scheme crashes and burns, things start feeling even worse for Dennis. It’s amazing to realize that was still possible.

On the third day that Dennis refuses to get out of bed at all, except to piss, Mac drags him out of his sweaty bedsheets without a word, and shoves him in the shower. He turns the water on over Dennis, who’s still dressed in his “I’ve given up on life” plaid pajama pants and an old t-shirt.

Dennis splutters, so enraged that none of the noises coming out of his mouth sound human, much less like any recognizable words in the English language.

“Shower. Get dressed. Eat breakfast. Go to work,” Mac growls.

“Screw you,” spits Dennis around a mouthful of cold shower water.

He shivers violently and his teeth start to clatter, but he refuses to turn the water warmer, purely out of spite. He’ll fucking show Mac for doing this. He’ll make that asshole feel guilty for pulling him out of his warm pit-of-depression bed and tossing him into this cold hard shower. And for yelling. Fuck Mac for thinking he has a right to yell, to manhandle Dennis, to give a shit.

Mac rolls his eyes and turns up the water temperature.

“You’re making yourself sick, Dennis,” he says, and his voice is less angry, but still firm. It’s infuriating. “I’m tired of watching you do this to yourself.”

“I’m not ‘ _making_ myself’ _shit_ ,” Dennis shouts, voice hoarse from disuse. “And if you don’t want to watch, fucking _go_. Move in with Charlie, for all I care. No one’s making you stay, asshole.”

His roommate shakes his head. “Nah, I’m not goin’ anywhere. You are, though. You’re going to Paddy’s. Today. I don’t care how shitty you feel. You may not be making yourself sick, Den, but you sure as hell aren’t helping yourself.”

“Oh, so now it’s your job to help me? You’re just gonna drag me out of bed every morning and throw me in the shower like I’m some kind of fucking dog or something?”

“Yeah, and you know why? ‘Cause you suck at taking care of yourself sometimes.”

Dennis glares at him, vibrating with silent fury. It’s not that he doesn’t have a good retort; he probably does. He probably could come up with at least half a dozen good ones, but he’s just too tired and angry to think of one at the moment.

Mac is wrong, though. Mac is always wrong, about everything.

“You have—” Mac checks his phone for the time, “—fifteen minutes to do what you need to do before I come back in and drag your sorry ass out of here. If I come back and find you’ve drowned yourself in our fucking tub, I’m gonna kill you, dude.”

Mac slams the door behind himself, and Dennis lets out a raw scream of rage.

He sits under the lukewarm water until his breathing slows down and the feeling of burning fury inside his chest ebbs slightly. When it finally does, he shucks off his soggy pajamas so he can half-heartedly wash his hair and scrub himself clean of the stinking failure of his weeks-long, piss-poor mood.

 

**Author's Note:**

> omg im dying bc i got validation 4 the first fic i posted. thank u world!!! here's a second one???


End file.
